‘Be careful what you wish for’ - if remote work is the norm, there is all the sudden massive downward competitive pressure on salaries, as now people can work from much lower cost of living areas. Or even lower cost of living countries.
Either officially, or unofficially.
What globalization did to manufacturing, remote work is going to do to knowledge work.
And in most cases, if the bosses give up on RTO, they’re going to be explicit about this. Because why not?
Remote work means ‘outsourcing’ for a FAANG includes Ohio (prev. Sunnyvale), not just India.
And if you think this isn’t having an effect on offered labor rates, available positions in certain countries, etc. then you’re not paying attention to the current market.
There are massive shifts to offshore work at most FAANGs actively going on right now. But it takes time.
Are there attempts to crack down/extract extra taxes? Yeah. But most are ineffective and/or don’t meaningfully change the economics. There is a lot of fat that can be trimmed/extracted from the super high peak of Silicon Valley comp (for one example).
A lot of folks in the US are just waiting to see what happens before they move, or are stuck with high mortgages.
I don't think that is an issue. Yes, companies which insist on RTO have to pay more, but as extra compensation in order to make up for the difference in time and money spent commuting.
But I'd argue what could be outsourced profitably has been outsourced already. And countries which welcome digital nomads who "work from home" while visiting on tourist visas are getting fewer also. In fact the Thai Government launched DTV which can be seen as precursor to measure and later capture (read: tax) some of the benefits of that for themselves.